from the hours?-days? dept

We've already talked about how people are starting to freak out about "lending clubs" forming on Facebook to share Kindle ebooks, now that Amazon has launched a ridiculously limited "lending" feature. Not surprisingly, such efforts are quickly moving beyond Facebook as well, such as with the launch of a service called eBookFling, which is basically a marketplace for matching up folks for "lending" such limited ebooks. I have no clue how well this particular service will work -- and I'm curious to see how both publishers and the Amazons and Barnes & Nobles of the world react to the fact that they're charging $1.99 for folks who don't have any "book credits" to get a book. I doubt many people will actually pay, but sooner or later I imagine someone's going to sue, and it'll make for quite the interesting lawsuit...

from the free-speech-for-all...-except-if-we-don't-like-it dept

"Amazon believes it is censorship not to sell certain books simply because we or others believe their message is objectionable."

The company quickly proved that wasn't the case and went back on its word with that book, and since then has taken down a number of other books it decided were objectionable. Apparently, one of the latest books it finds objectionable is one that explains how to game Amazon's ratings system. A guy, who figured out how to game the system that rates the popularity of Kindle books, wrote an ebook about his experience gaming Amazon's Kindle ratings. It was up for a while, until people started writing about it.. and then suddenly it disappeared. Apparently, Amazon's views on "censorship" are not quite as principled as the company made them out to be.

from the and-burn-down-the-libraries dept

We've already pointed out how Amazon's new "lending" feature for Kindle ebooks is extremely limited, in such a way that it's barely useful, but already we're seeing fearmongering about how that feature is going to create "lost" book sales. Glyn Moody points us to an article at The Next Web, which discusses how some folks have formed a "lending club" on Facebook, so that they can find a larger pool of people to lend books to and from. And, the article's author warns, this inevitably means "lost" book sales:

Whether Amazon anticipated users organising themselves into a lending club or not, we're not sure but it's likely to result in many lost sales. After all, most books can be comfortably read in 14 days. If all you need to do to get hold of Kindle books is to request a loan from a stranger online, how many will you actually bother to buy?

The article goes on to ask: "can Amazon really do anything to stop this growing?" and wonders if publishers will kill off this feature entirely.

Let's try rewriting that paragraph in a manner that highlights the ridiculousness of the argument:

Whether library organizers anticipated users taking out books or not, we're not sure but it's likely to result in many lost sales. After all, most books can be comfortably read in 14 days. If all you need to do to get a hold of books is to go to the library and take one out, how many will actually bother to buy?

And yet, libraries did not kill book sales. At all. Separately, one of the reasons why I still haven't joined the ebook parade is that I like being able to actually lend out books to others. So, by the argument above, it's the DRM feature on ebooks today that has meant "lost sales." So perhaps we should just get rid of that? Limiting the usefulness of ebooks with crazy restrictions makes them a lot less valuable, meaning decreased sales. Ignoring that and thinking that only this sort of extremely limited lending will somehow harm ebook sales is pure fearmongering and is based on very little evidence.

from the not-this-again dept

Last year, you may recall, Amazon got into some trouble for deleting a supposedly "infringing" copy of George Orwell's 1984 from peoples' Kindles. After this got a ton of attention, the company announced that it would change its system so books won't get deleted from Kindles any more. Of course, they never said they wouldn't delete them from your archive, however. Separately, you may recall that a few weeks back, Amazon got into a bit of a kerfuffle over a book concerning pedophilia. The company initially defended allowing this book for sale, by stating:

"Amazon believes it is censorship not to sell certain books simply because we or others believe their message is objectionable."

However, hours later, Amazon changed its mind and suddenly became one with its inner censor. Apparently, with its newfound willingness to go that route, it's begun unleashing those powers widely, taking down a whole bunch of "erotica" books without explanation. Apparently, many of the books in question include fictional accounts of incest. Of course, as some have pointed out, the Bible also contains accounts of incest -- and a book seen in a recent Amazon ad includes a fictional account of incest.

While the Slashdot account of this story says that the books are being removed from the Kindle that's not exactly true. They're being removed from your Kindle archive. This means that if you delete the book from your Kindle, you can't redownload it. In other words, it's like the bookshelf in your basement where you store books you might want to go back to some day, but probably won't touch for a while. However, for a company trying so hard to pretend that its ebooks are just like real books, it really ought to stop deleting things after you've supposedly "bought" them.

Update: Amazon emails me to say they've put out a statement saying this was a mistake that has now been fixed, stating:

Due to a technical issue, for a short window of time three books were temporarily unavailable for re-download by customers who had previously purchased them. When this was brought to our attention, we fixed the problem and those books were once again made available for re-download. We apologize for the inconvenience.

It still appears that the books themselves are no longer for sale. That's Amazon's prerogative, of course, but the lack of explanation still seems pretty weak -- especially after supposedly defending not being about censorship. Also, there is no explanation of just what kind of technical "glitch" this was. Considering the trouble the company got into for deleting books in the past, you would think this would have been more carefully reviewed. Finally, the fact that it took nearly a week and numerous high profile media mentions to get Amazon to respond to questions from the authors is pretty weak customer service.

from the choices dept

This is making the rounds on Twitter, but cc was the first to submit it here. When Amazon kicked Wikileaks off of their S3 hosting service, we noted how it had (just weeks earlier) tried to defend a pro-pedophilia book by stating:

"Amazon believes it is censorship not to sell certain books simply because we or others believe their message is objectionable."

While Amazon did cave and pull that book eventually, some suggested that perhaps this just meant that Amazon would be fine with Wikileaks if it was being sold in book form. And, apparently, someone is testing that theory, and so far it's working. You can apparently buy the Wikileaks leaked State Department cables on Amazon for your kindle, if you're so inclined. Of course, since they're available (at an ever increasing number of mirror sites) for free, there's no reason to -- but as a way of showing Amazon's hypocrisy, well, that's just priceless.

Update: Amazon's "explanation" is that the book also contains commentary. Um. What? So if the Wikileaks website also contained commentary (which I believe it does), it would be okay?

from the not-as-big-as-you-might-think dept

Amazon seems to have a way with presenting information about its ebook sales in a way designed to mislead people into thinking it's more significant than it really is. You may remember last year, when Amazon announced that on Christmas day, for the first time ever, ebooks outsold regular books. That got a lot of press coverage. But it was somewhat meaningless. That's because on Christmas, plenty of people who received a Kindle probably decided to buy an ebook or three. And it's also a day when fewer people have reason to go to Amazon and buy a physical book, since they may have just received some books as gifts (though, to be fair, some may have received Amazon gift cards too, but you don't necessarily need to use them that same day).

So what happens if you ask how many "printed books" Amazon sold, instead of using the smaller number of "hardcover books"? Following the same ratio, Amazon would be selling approximately 334 paperbacks for every 100 hardcover books -- or a total of 434 printed books for every 180 ebooks. That would mean over 70% of the books Amazon sells are still printed books -- 180 out of 614 -- with ebooks accounting for just 29.3% of all the books that Amazon sells.

Add to that the twin facts that Amazon covers 90% of ebook sale and that it only represents 19% of the overall book market, and you get an estimate that ebooks represent about 6% of the total market. This is certainly a non-zero number, and there's no doubt that it's growing, so it's a trend to watch out for. But we're a long, long way from ebooks really being a majority of the market. As the blog points out, even Amazon admits that no ebook has sold more than a million copies:

According to Amazon's own figures, no ebook has ever sold more than one million copies. (Though Stieg Larsson's three ebooks, added together, total one million in sales -- an average of just 333,333 per book.) PC World reports Stephenie Meyer is close to selling one million ebooks -- though she's sold over 100 million printed books.

This isn't to say the ebook market isn't important, but Amazon's statements promoting ebook sales seem purposely designed to pump up the significance of ebook sales, which still represent a much smaller proportion of the market than the company would have you believe.

A month ago I bought a kindle and was really excited to use it on vacation. I bought a few books and when I was done, I bought another. Then they froze my account, so I called in and logged a case.

Within 48 hours I got a call back, saying it was an error on their side and they'd unfreeze it for me, but I'd just need to re-order the book. I thought no problem, thanks for the help. So I bought the book a second time and it automatically freezes me out again. I call in and log another case, but get no phone call back as promised from an account specialist.

This apparently has gone on for four weeks, involving approximately 20 phone calls and emails... and still no solution from Amazon. Anyone know of any case where the same thing happened with a physical book?

from the ouch dept

Amazon pitched its Kindle Dx as a perfect replacement from having to lug around heavy textbooks in college, but it seems that the drawbacks to the technology have students pining for the old textbooks (found via Slashdot). In fact, in a survey after using the Kindle Dx for a while, "80 percent of MBA students who participated in Amazon's pilot program said they would not recommend the Kindle DX as a classroom study aid..." And it's not that they don't like ebooks. The same report notes that "more than 90 percent liked it for pleasure reading." Apparently not being able to "scribble notes in the margins, easily highlight passages or fully appreciate color charts and graphics" is sort of a pain for educational settings. Who knew?

I have no doubt that the feature provides some interesting data, but it's not clear that users realize their highlighting and notes are being stored and used that way. Amazon basically says there's no big privacy deal here, because the data is always aggregated. But it sounds like many users don't realize this is happening at all. Amazon says people can find out they added this feature by reading "forum posts and help pages" -- but it's not clear how many people actually do read those things. While I'm sure many people are fine with this, others might not be. And it once again highlights a key concern in that the "features" of your "book" can change over time. Your highlighting may have been yours in the past, but suddenly it becomes Amazon's with little notice.

from the yakety-yak dept

When the second generation Kindle ebook reader launched with a text-to-speech functionality, the Authors Guild freaked out, claiming that this violated a totally made up on the spot aspect of copyright law. Plenty of copyright lawyers dissected this claim in great detail and concluded that the Authors Guild was making up stories about how they wanted copyright law to act, rather than paying attention to what copyright law actually said. There simply is no copyright violation in having a computer read a book aloud to you. However, after the Authors Guild ratcheted up the threats, Amazon finally caved and let authors choose to block the text-to-speech functionality.